Wednesday, 26 May 2010

50s Supro Dual Tone

I've been introduced to the Supro Dual Tone by its reissue by Eastwood a few years ago, but at the time I was into their more spectacular guitars, like the Wandre Doris, the Tokai Hummingbird or the Airline 59 Custom... Now my taste gets more refined and I enjoy the original humble Supro with its old gold mock-humbucker - actually big singlecoils -, art deco stop tail, 4 knobs in a line and double pickguard (one would say a scratchplate on top of a pickguard, but that's a lot of vocabulary!)

Supro, like Airline and National, other brands reissued by Eastwood, was a sub-brand of Valco, a US company active in the 50s-60s, that eventually merged with Kay before bankrupting. They are at the core of the vintage guitars hype, with people like David Bowie, Jack White or Robert Smith having taken them out of attics and played them on stage again!